Predators remain in position

In Nashville, the Predators were as cold as a stalker on the plains on Monday night.

Juuse Saros made 38 saves and Nashville defeated the Florida Panthers, 4-1, on home ice.

“I’ve been just trying to take it game by game and not think about too much ahead,” Saros said. “Just trying to focus one period at a time and give the team a chance to win. Even today when Florida had their time, as a team I think we really stuck together. You always kind of feed off of your teammates too when you see guys blocking shots and giving their all and stuff like that. It’s always fun to see that.”

Sam Bennett scored the Panthers’ only goal in the game. He opened the scoring in the game for a 1-0 Florida lead in the first period.

“We wanted to throw some pucks at [Saros] and get some rebounds and wanted to be better in the blue paint today,” Florida defenseman Radko Gudas said. “I thought we did a pretty good job of getting pucks through. We just couldn’t get the rebounds that we wanted. We couldn’t get the shots through when we got good screens. We were most of the time on the wrong side of the rebounds.”

Mikael Granlund tied the game at 1-1 to send the game to the second period even up.

Nick Cousins put the Preds ahead, 2-1 in the middle frame.

“We’re scoring a lot more goals than we were earlier in the year and we’re giving up a lot less too,” Cousins said. “I mean, we look like a completely different team from the start of the year. All our forwards are buying into the identity we want to play, and with that you have success. We’ve just got to keep it going. The way we’re playing right now, it’s tough to compete with us.”

Erik Haula and Yakov Trenin struck for third period goals to make the final, 4-1.

“I think when [Duchene] has the opportunity to make some plays, he can do it,” Predators head coach John Hynes said. “As you saw tonight, he made a nice play to Haula. I think he’s come in and fit. There’s some chemistry. There’s three veteran players that seem like they have some chemistry, so hopefully they can continue to go the way they’re going right now.”

“It was progressively deteriorating as the game was going on,” Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville said. “So we thought it was prudent to take him out at that time.”